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Friday, January 27, 2017

Brian Aldiss’ 1958 Non-Stop
(aka Starship) is a landmark novel in
generation starship stories.Featuring a
broken down ship hurtling through the blackness of space to destinations
unknown, the humanity on board has reverted to various levels of primitivism,
the corridors and rooms of the massive ship almost unrecognizable in an
overgrowth of weeds and bushes.The
novel about one man’s journey through the layers of civilization (for lack of a
better term), and ultimately the enlightenment awaiting at the end, Aldiss
wrote an engaging story imbued with enough profundity to make the novel worth
some merit.In 2010 Greg Bear returned
to the theme of a broken down generation starship to tell his own story, the
dynamic Hull Zero Three the result.

Awaking from a dreamtime infused with visions of life on
Earth, a man, dubbed Teacher by the little girl who frees him from his sac,
emerges into the chaos of a ship filled with floating debris.Gravity coming and going in erratic ship spin-ups
and spin-downs, he and the girl try to survive the various dangers hidden in
the debris, as well as the strange creatures, not all of which are entirely
malevolent.Losing and gaining knowledge
in the form of books, their survival quest takes them slowly toward Hull Zero
Three, and the bizarreness that awaits them there.

Longer review: Halcyon
Drift (1972) is the story of Grainger, a man stranded on a distant planet after
his spacecraft has crashed and his partner died.Eventually rescued, he’s not without debt:
firstly in money to the group that rescued him, and secondly to the mind
parasite that took up residence in his brain while he was stranded.Back among civilized systems, he must find a
way to repay the people he owes.A
chance encounter, however, changes his fortunes: a pilot is needed to fly a
very new, highly experimental spaceship.And where to?None other than the
Halycon Drift, an uncharted nebuli where a treasure awaits to be recovered.

While Stableford’s on-point prose makes this story readable,
overall it has serious trouble distinguishing itself from the myriad of other
space operas.If you are a fan of such
works, then for sure Halcyon Drift
will scratch your itch.Otherwise,
nothing special here.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The following review is of the fourth book in a series of n
books. (Cherryh just keeps pumping them out, the latest count
seventeen.) Therefore, I will skip the series intro and assume
if you’re reading this, you are familiar with the first three
Foreigner books, Foreigner, Invader, and Inheritor,
and will jump into the review of Precursor (1999).

Three years have passed since the events of Inheritor.
Bren still lives among the atevi as chief human ambassador, with Jace
working closely at his side as translator and linguistics expert.
The atevi have made huge strides in the three years to develop
technology, including a functioning space ship. With things
going smoothly in the intervening time, and violence with the
Mospheirans and orbiting station essentially non-existent, it comes
as a major surprise to Bren when in short order he’s informed by
Tabini of three things: Jace is being pulled from his staff and sent
back to live with other humans in the orbiting station, secondly that
Bren too is in for a space ride, his presence also required in the
space station to find out why Jace was recalled, and thirdly Bren
needs to take advantage of the trip to broker key trade agreements so
that the personnel aboard the station get the resources they need and
the atevi get access to the technology they desire.
Negotiations initially going smoothly, when an appointed meeting
doesn’t take place, and no word is sent about a re-schedule, Bren
starts to get suspicious. But with rumors floating around that
hostile aliens have been found in a nearby star system, things start
to get tense.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Certainly one of the names of science fiction from not so long ago that the current glut (aka Age of e-pulp) is quickly eliding, Keith Roberts was once one of the most formidable forces in British sf. Style dense and evocative, his inclination to the visual arts came out strongly in his work, almost as much as his dark, wary visions of humanity and civilization paved the way thematically. Bringing together seven stories from a spectrum of Roberts’ styles and settings, The Grain Kings (1976) is a solid collection worth the reader’s time—certainly more than the majority of science fiction appearing today. (I can’t even write ‘published today’ as much of it is self-generated, independently put out…)

Opening the collection is an alternate history wherein the UK made peace rather than carry on WWII with the Nazis. “Weihnachtsabend” tells of the ‘glitter and glamour’ of Europe after the Nazi’s triumph. A vividly etched story, the imagery has sharp edges even as the storyline dissolves into pure, purposeful bizarreness made all the more surreal by being Christmas Eve. The story bookending the other side of the collection likewise containing strongly surreal material, “I Lose Medea” tells of a man and his girlfriend who, attempting to go camping near a beach one day, encounter an army of old. Cannons set up and fired, the story shifts in and out of transparency, all as tragedy looms for the man and his girlfriend.

Friday, January 20, 2017

Arthur C. Clarke’s 1955 Earthlight is a Silver Age classic. A light spy thriller plot draped over descriptions of what life on the moon might be like, for as subtle (save the fireworks of the conclusion) as the storytelling is, the novel builds most of its bulk in describing monorails, sports in light gravity, underground mining operations, and other potential aspects of life on the moon. Taking the lunar baton and running with it a half century later is Ian McDonald’s 2015 Luna: New Moon. Oh, and plot comes a lot more enhanced…

McDonald himself dubbing the novel “Game of Domes“, I must admit Luna: New Moon is the best space opera I’ve read since Dan Simmons’ Hyperion (30 years later!!), not to mention a perfect three-word elevator pitch. Starks, Greyjoys, and Lannisters set aside, McDonald populates his moon with Cortas, Mackenzies, Suns, Asamoahs, and Vrontsovs—five families which have industrialized Earth’s largest satellite and settled into their own pitch and heave of feuds and competition. Called the five dragons, the novel is told largely from the perspective of the Cortas family, as their main rivals, the Mackenzies, try to stay one step ahead in the game of resource control, technology, and naturally (this is space opera), power.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Regardless of year published, the following are the books I
read in 2016 that stuck out for one reason or another. (The best of only books published in 2016 can be found here.) The gods know I am horrendous at doing my
21st century duty and reading as many female writers as male, homosexual as
hetero, three-eyed as two.My ratios are
bad.But when looking through the
reviews I posted, this might have been one of my better years for diversity.In no particular those that lingered are:

Breathmoss & Other Exhalations
by Ian Macleod – Containing some of the best short fiction of Macleod’s career,
this is a collection that can be read several times to discover the details of
setting and character, in a wide variety of sub-genres, and all the while
drooling over Macleod’s glorious prose.

The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G.
Ballard – Not for the faint of heart, Ballard's collage—sorry, collection—sorry,
tableaux—sorry, mosaic—sorry, I don’t know wtf to call it—tests the limits of
what precisely fiction is.A visual/ideological
experience in the least, Ballard combines and recombines imagery of the 70s
into a vision both political and artistic that will not be to everyone’s
liking, but it is very much mine.

Distraction by Bruce Sterling –
Quite possibly Sterling's best novel, Distraction
is the purest distillation of his unique brand of satire.Politicized, Sterling takes more than one
crack at American politics, effortlessly cutting it off at the knees all the
while asking humorously posed questions in scenarios having one foot in comedy
and the other all too reality.

Friday, January 13, 2017

The gods know there is a surfeit of serial killer novels in
existence.It is one of the most known
tropes of fiction, let alone television, film, etc.How then, to distinguish yourself in the field?Accuracy of detail? Vividness of character depiction?Organic nature of mystery building?A properly disguised surprise or two?Well, yes or no to these questions, they can’t
hurt—at least that seems Joe R. Lansdale’s approach in his 2000 The Bottoms.

Young Harry Crane lives in the rural bottoms of
Depression-era East Texas.His father
the local township’s barber and constable, when Harry and his sister Tom
discover a mutilated body in the woods late one night, he gets involved.The townsfolk discovering the body is a black
woman’s, nobody wants to get involved.The local doctor dismisses the case as none of his business and the
sheriff directly states it’s none of anybody’s business, except the blacks’.Harry’s father doing a little poking around
in his free time, he inadvertently pokes the hornet’s nest, and more bodies
begin appearing.Trouble is, not all are
the result of the serial killer.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

There are innumerable good writers who struggle to gain
wider recognition.Their style or
content too non-formulaic for the average mainstream reader to latch on, they
hover around the fringes, writing quality fiction, and occasionally attempt to
write more familiar material in the hopes of gaining a readership that might be
willing to check out their back catalogue.Paul Kearney has walked this road.Those who know his work are aware of the talent—the will to write
something different in the face of popular trends, but eventually giving in and
attempting to write something more familiar.His Macht trilogy of pseudo-Spartan-Persian novels gaining him some
relative recognition, for the follow up effort Kearney decided to test his
readers by returning to his roots.2016’s
The Wolf in the Attic is a return to
more literary fantasy—and a welcome return, at that.

We are introduced to young Anna several years after her
family emigrated from Greece to the UK in the wake of WWI violence.Only she and her father arriving on foreign
shores, they live a life of poverty in the backstreets of Oxford, her father
attempting to convert his political leanings into a means.Out late one night walking in the local fens,
Anna is witness to a murder, and in her rush home, is confronted by the
assailant.The young man just watching
her, she eventually finds her way back, and things return to normal.The memories of the evening troubling, however,
they are also alluring, and some time later Anna decides to revisit the
fens.Further incidents occurring, it
isn’t long after Anna begins to hear strange noises in their home’s attic, even
as family tragedy looms ever closer.

Monday, January 2, 2017

2016 is come to an end, and it’s time to take a look back and
offer some first impressions (more solid impressions, of course, requiring time
for the books to filter and settle where they will).

Overall, I would say 2016 was a good year.Not great, not average, good.That bland pronouncement can be spiced up by
the fact China Mieville made a strong return, releasing two of the best books
he’s ever written.Tim Powers likewise
published two novels/novellas in 2016, one of which at least proved he is still
one of the most pure storytellers on the market.(I have yet to read the other.)A debut novella by Haris A. Durrani made an
impression for the strong interplay of the fantastical and personal).Paul Kearney abandoned epic fantasy to return
to his roots of literary fantasy—and made it a welcome return.Don Delillo dipped into science fiction in
glacial, existential form.The
ever-unpredictable Bruce Sterling brought us retro-Futurism in contemporary,
politically relevant form.And Kij
Johnson revised Lovecraft in solid fashion that goes against some of the grains
of contemporary gender discussion, while going with others (natch).In the short fiction arena, I got my hands on
several quality anthologies and collections, which as a whole had a bit more
shine than those I read from 2015.The
curated effort by Jacob Weisman Invaders,
Jeffrey Ford’s A Natural History of Hell,
Neil Williamson’s Secret Language,
Ken Liu’s Invisible Planets, and
Michael Swanwick’s Not So Much, Said the
Cat—all made for a refreshing break from the gushing wealth of vanilla available
on the market these days.